Water polo takes up much of Irvine resident Jae Park’s time.
Park is a father of two boys, ages 7 and 13, who both play water polo. They practice five days a week and play in tournaments two weekends a month.
Park said his family is “ecstatic” that Irvine’s council opted to include a state-of-the-art aquatics facility in the first phase of the Great Park‘s development.
Related: Irvine’s Great Park priority projects include concert venue, botanical gardens and aquatic facility
The aquatics center, in partnership with USA Water Polo, was initially not included in the phase one development plan. However, during a recent council meeting, community members overwhelmingly spoke in favor of prioritizing the $90 million, three-pool facility ahead of the 2028 Summer Olympics that will take place in Los Angeles.
Since water polo is a “winning sport for the United States in the Olympics,” Councilmember Mike Carroll said it was a “no-brainer” to include the facility in this next phase of Great Park development.
Groundbreaking for projects in this first phase could start within the next 30 to 45 days, Great Park Executive Director Pete Carmichael said. Groundwork and utilities installation is expected to begin in the spring of 2024.
All the projects included in the first phase, such as the aquatics facility, should be up and running by 2029, according to city documents.
Under the partnership agreement, USA Water Polo will pay $12 million toward the construction of the venue and get exclusive use of 10,000 square feet of it for its offices, classrooms and locker rooms and scheduling priorities for events. Its use of the facility would be capped at about 25% to 30% of its total operating hours.
Members of Orange County’s water polo community welcomed the move.
“Irvine is fast becoming the center of the water polo universe in the United States,” Park said. “I have no doubt that the Great Park aquatics facility will be a source of pride and inspiration for our community.”
Most of the main water polo tournaments, which take place one to two times a month, happen in Orange County, particularly in Irvine, Park said. Given the number of clubs competing across different age groups, there are a lot of games, he said.
“We are really short on pool space,” Park said.
Tournaments like the USA Water Polo Junior Olympics, he said, attract tens of thousands of families. And the new aquatics center, Park said, will be a boon for the local economy, especially since water polo is a year-round sport and players need to practice continuously to stay in shape.
“We’ve been forced to go all the way into Riverside County because of a lack of pool space,” Park said. “A lot of the pool space that’s available is old and out of date.”
In the last two years, the 10 and under team of the Patriot Aquatics club, which his sons play for, won national championships, a “point of pride for a lot of local water polo enthusiasts who live here in Irvine,” Park said.
Orange County has the “greatest concentration of water polo players,” said Christopher Ramsey, an Irvine resident and CEO of USA Water Polo, and it has the “greatest concentration of water polo competitions” in the U.S.
Yet, USA Water Polo does not have a dedicated aquatics facility to train at despite competing at the highest levels. The women’s national team shares training space at Long Beach City College while the men’s team maintains fitness and training by playing in professional leagues in Europe, Ramsey said.
He attributes some of the water polo success to the longstanding water polo tradition at UC Irvine.
“A lot of UCI alums have come through the system and contributed to us winning medals,” Ramsey said, specifically pointing to Olympians Ryan Bailey, Tim Hutten and Jeff Powers.
The sport, Ramsey said, is one of the fastest-growing competitions in the country with membership doubling in the last 10 years.
“We are thrilled that the council voted to address the need for a world-class pool complex in Irvine and that our Olympic athletes will have a place to train for the LA28 Games,” Ramsey said.
Local Olympians weigh in
Olympic-medal-winning water polo player, Julie Ertel, is excited at the prospect of “top-level play” coming to her backyard. The aquatics center, she said, is long overdue.
When Ertel moved to Irvine in 2000, she said she was excited at the “mecca of opportunity” in the Great Park. Her children have ridden the balloon and played in the rock structures, but as they get older, Ertel worries “there really is nothing my kids will get to experience at the Great Park.”
“A city of our size should really have multiple pools that are available to all residents,” Ertel said.
When Ertel was training for the Olympics, she said, the team was based in Los Alamitos where it had a dedicated facility for part of the year. It shared the pools with the city swim team, and the city would run water safety programs there.
The facility is now dilapidated, Ramsay said.
“Our team would not have won a medal in 2000, I am certain of it, if we did not have a home base pool because you really need that,” Ertel said. “We are traveling all over the world to compete, and you want a home base. You want to have that security of knowing that your practice time is going to be at a similar time.”
The new aquatics center can also help kids become water safe, said Courtney Mathewson, a resident of Anaheim Hills and Olympian.
Mathewson, a two-time Olympic gold medalist in water polo who now works as a swim teacher, has noticed a growing interest in the sport.
“I am 36, and I started playing when I was 8 years old. This sport has grown tremendously since that time,” Mathewson said. “They developed splash ball and water polo lite as programs that will help feed into the water polo pipeline.”
“There are just way more water polo players than there’s pool space in the city,” Ertel said.
As the next steps, city staffers will return with a reimagined plan at the next Great Park Board meeting on April 11 to identify what elements could be pushed to future phases to make way for the aquatics facility.
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